Nadie Escuchaba (unknown-year)

December 2, 1988

Review/Film;
Punctured Illusions On Castro

By JANET MASLIN

Published: December 2, 1988

LEAD: ''Piece of cake for intellectuals'': that is how Rene Tavernier, a French member of PEN, describes Fidel Castro's Cuba at a conference on human rights violations that is included in ''Nobody Listened,'' a documentary by Nestor Almendros and Jorge Ulla. Mr. Tavernier discusses the appeal held by the Cuban model for ideologues who have grown disillusioned with Communist states elsewhere.

''Piece of cake for intellectuals'': that is how Rene Tavernier, a French member of PEN, describes Fidel Castro's Cuba at a conference on human rights violations that is included in ''Nobody Listened,'' a documentary by Nestor Almendros and Jorge Ulla. Mr. Tavernier discusses the appeal held by the Cuban model for ideologues who have grown disillusioned with Communist states elsewhere. ''No big power,'' he says. ''No cold monster. Castro is a friend of the intellectuals. So he pretends, and we believe him.''

''Nobody Listened,'' which opens today for a limited run at the Cinema Studio 2, is a stinging and trenchant indictment of the kind of radical chic to which Mr. Tavernier refers. Frankly partisan, it collects the extremely persuasive testimony of many Cubans who regard themselves as victims of the Castro regime.

Though the film also includes some rare newsreel footage, mostly of the early days of the Castro revolution, much of it is devoted to these witnesses' accounts. A number of key figures from those days, among them Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo and Huber Matos, have served long terms in Cuban prisons and are given ample time to describe the horror and indignity of their ordeals.

Although ''Nobody Listened'' includes brief clandestinely shot glimpses of contemporary Cuba, and even a sequence inside what is supposed to be a model Cuban jail (with a beauty shop where female inmates receive haircuts and manicures, ''all of course completely free''), the film makers themselves were denied the chance to film in their former country. (Mr. Ulla is a Cuban-born journalist and documentary film maker; Mr. Almendros, the master cinematographer, was born in Spain and educated in Cuba during the 1950's.) So the film opens cleverly with a sequence in which Mr. Ulla makes repeated telephone calls to various Cuban authorities, requesting permission to make the film; he is put off, misled and finally labeled a traitor. This is immediately followed by official Cuban footage of a sunny touristy land that bears no resemblance to the place that is subsequently described here.

The film's many interviewees describe both the physical misery of captivity and the spiritual agony of realizing that their earlier hopes for a revitalized Cuba would be dashed. If anything, the film covers so many bases that it sometimes glosses too quickly over the larger political framework for these personal accounts.

Among the most indelible reminiscences are those of Alcides Martinez, who describes incarceration with a group of other men in a space so tiny it was known as a drawer; a tiny letter smuggled out under these conditions is held up as a very real trophy. Jorge Valls, a writer, on the other hand, points out that at least ''free thinking dwelt behind prison walls; it was truly the free territory of Cuba.'' As for public free expression at the time of the revolution, Mr. Valls says: ''None of that in 1959! Just extraordinary exaltation, fanatical idolatry of the victorious warrior, and rampant folly that made everything acceptable.''

The capriciousness of Cuban justice in those times is underscored repeatedly here, as various Castro lieutenants describe the minimal disloyalties that sent them to jail for very long sentences. ''The whole thing was so devoid of seriousness, so arbitrary, so out of place in a true judicial system that it's only conceivable in a country where the warlord dictates all and the rest merely assent,'' Mr. Matos says of his trial. When Mr. Ulla asks why justice is so variable in Cuba, Mr. Matos says, ''In Castro's hands, the law depends on the highs and lows of his temperament.''

Making no attempt to give equal time to pro-Castro partisans, the film makers allow the sheer weight of testimony here to speak for itself. ''Nobody Listened'' is an urgent and painful litany, measured in its tone but passionately intent on making its point.
Radical Chic That's Lost Its Bloom
NOBODY LISTENED, produced, written and directed by Nestor Almendros and Jorge Ulla; in Spanish with English subtitles; director of photography, Orson Ochoa; edited by Gloria Pineyro and Esther Duran; music by Ignacio Cervantes; presented by the Cuban Human Rights Film Project. At Cinema Studio 2, Broadway and 66th Street. Running time: 117 minutes. This film has no rating.